The Missus: you wrote :"In Switzerland they have had some raving lunatics going on about stoning people, cutting their hands off" etc. Could you please share your source of information for people in Switzerland calling for hands to be cut off?

nalood100

I do not know what TheMissus' source is.

But here is a source.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-ammann/the-real-reasons-why-the_b_373947.html

Quote:

"…The former Imam of a mosque in Geneva, Hani Ramadan, a Swiss citizen by the way, publicly justified the stoning of adulterers or the punitive amputation of the hand of a thief. Muslim parents prevented their daughters from attending swimming classes, gymnastics or summer camps in public schools because they didn't want their girls to be together with boys. Media reports about forced marriages, female genital mutilations and "honor killings" of Muslim women - all confirmed by authorities or in court -- came as a shocking surprise. A university professor even went as far as to suggest in an official publication of a federal commission to introduce elements of the Sharia, the Muslim legal system, into Switzerland."

Anyone who is not just a little spooked by this sort of thing is in denial.

Doubtless the usual gang of OLO Lefties who, when it comes to Islam, follow the line of hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil, you're racist for even thinking evil, will try to minimise this sort of thing or provide examples where non-Muslims also said or did horrendous things. Clear headed readers will see through such obscurantism.

TheMissus: "You could scream rant and be outraged at what happened at Jonestown without being called a bigot, racist or xenophobic."

So you don't approve tarring all Christians with the Johnstown brush, or all Catholics with the IRA brush, or indeed the Nigerian mob brush http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_kmafp/is_200405/ai_kepm459043/

Yet you seem perfectly happy to tar all Muslims with the 9/11 brush, all Australian Muslims with the "Sydney Louts" brush.

TheMissus: "Why do people defend the indefensible Tell me why."

It is a big world, there are a lot of people in it, and some of them do really weird things. This includes defending just about any act imaginable - including 9/11. David Hicks for example. So I am certain you are right - there will be some idiot who will defend what the Sydney louts did. But the exception does not prove the rule, and that tiny handful of weirdos aside all Australians, including Muslims and probably most of the louts parents would not dream of it.

To give an example of how weird it can get, here we have Philip Tang saying "Islam is a demented and evil ideology bent on destroying non-Islamic culture". Given the vast majority of Muslims in the world are normal peaceful people, I find saying this sort of thing indefensible. Case in point: the worlds largest Muslim country, Indonesia, is showing us an ethnically diverse region can be knit into a peaceful, secular democracy. Pity the predominately Christian Yugoslavia could not pull off the same thing, eh? Yet here you are defending the indefensible. Tell me why.

Pericles,

<By the same token, if you insist on tarring all Islam with the brush of terrorism, you should also to saddle all Christians with the responsibility for Jonestown, should you not?
That would be completely fair, and utterly reasonable.>

You’re confusing Islam with Muslims.
Islam is a doctrine.
Muslims are people.

Tarring all Islam with the brush of terrorism, yes.
Tarring all Muslims with the brush of terrorism, no.

The vast majority of the brainwashed Muslim hordes practise Islam-lite.
However, Islam full-strength unequivocally condones terrorism against infidels.

This is the dilemma facing would-be reformists of Islam, the ones brave enough to speak out in public.
Their desire to bring Islam up-to-speed with the rest of the world is intractably hampered by the immutability of Mohammed’s message, so that the bad guys will always win.
Mohammed is the perfect example for all Muslims for all time,
but Mohammed was a terrorist.
The Koran is the perfect, unchangeable and eternal word of Allah.
Clearly, reformists have some inertia to overcome.

The analogy you draw is “completely (un)fair, and utterly (un)reasonable”.
In fact, it’s bizarre.

RStuart says:“Case in point: the worlds largest Muslim country, Indonesia, is showing us an ethnically diverse region can be knit into a peaceful, secular democracy. Pity the predominately Christian Yugoslavia could not pull off the same thing, eh? Yet here you are defending the indefensible. Tell me why.”

Indonesia may well have a rosy future—but its past, even its recent past has been far from “peaceful”

Tell us why & how RStuart, you overlooked the below -listed minor hiccups to that peaceful knitting
1) East Timor occupation and terror
2) West Irian colonisation & displacement
3) The Aceh civil war & its widespread abuses
4) The religious -ethnic massacres in Maluku & Sulawesi
5) The murder or brutalisation of millions of ethnic Chinese in Java.

*though their religion alone is now denied full freedom of expression.*

You miss the point here Nalood 100. As Fellow Human pointed out,
Muslims don't need minarets to practise their faith and as every
other bit of architecture is highly regulated in Switzerland,
minarets should be no different.

Where Islam has a problem, seemingly wherever it goes, is that
where Islam goes, political Islam invariably follows. In the West,
religion is commonly regarded as a lifestyle choice these days and
people protest loudly, when religion interferes in politics.

If political Islam openly claims that how the West lives is all wrong,
that we would all be better off as devout Muslims and that they aim
to turn Europe into an Islamic State, then the whole thing is not
about religion but politics. Politics is of course open slather,
so you'll cop on the chin what you least expect, for people respond.

The sad thing about Islamic States, is that the first thing that
goes, is freedom of expression. If we said what we say about
Christianity on OLO, about Islam in an Islamic State, a large
chunk of OLO posters would in fact be in jail :)